I may not be Batman, but I'm as close to him as you're gonna get!

Main menu

Post navigation

The Writing Writer: Dial E #1

So I didn’t know what to expect from Dial E. I haven’t kept up with the new 52 Dial H and my only other introduction to the series was some back issues of the books first run way back when. While the premise was interesting (using heroes sent in by kids) the book itself wasn’t all that great. The only thing I had to expect from this book was high quality art from a variety of artists. Man did it deliver on that front. Every page has a new villain which the art reflects incredibly well. The story, however, doesn’t. While it’s not an overall bad story, due to the nature of the beast (I.E. having so many different people on the book) it feels disjointed. The flow from page to page is sometimes jarring and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and so the dialogue has to work double time to try and keep things together.

For the most part it works, I knew who was turning the dial and when. The problem is that the story itself isn’t all that interesting. A bunch of kids running around with a dial that turns them into supervillains sounds like it could be interesting. However, most of the book is the group running from the police after their initial bank robbery or whatever it was that they did. As I said, visually it’s scattered so all I know is there were sacks of something that later disappeared because…reasons? It might also have helped if there was some time taken to develop the group of kids. This feels like DC meets the Boxcar Kids, except some people care about the Boxcar Kids.

Dial E is a gimmick, much like 3D covers and this entire month of DC comics. It’s a cool gimmick regardless of the poor story and I’d love to see something like it again except with better planning and communication between the creative team.